Light a New Candle
by MahoganyDoodles
Summary: She draws her strength from the sun, but Khessa was her light, her flame, her candle. And now that she has gone out, she finds another, small but burning bright— Janai has learned so much since she first met the human.


The first word she learns is _injured. _

They're on a battlefield, victorious—_but can it truly be called victorious with what it has cost?_—when their general approaches her, limping. But no, it's not herself she comes seeking medical assistance for: she seeks it for her warriors and, stranger still, _Janai's_ warriors.

She comes bearing plans for moving the wounded to a more secure position and a strategy to prioritize their care and allocate resources to save the most lives; she comes bearing healing knowledge that Janai would have never dreamed a human possessed, and that even she barely understands after nearly a century commanding Lux Aurea's forces.

Their general denies medical care for her own serious wounds, insisting that others receive care first.

Kazi is her mouth and her hands as she tries to understand this. But even with their translation, Janai can't understand why the human refused to budge, instead setting out to initiate her plans to treat the wounded rather than argue further. Weren't humans supposed to be greedy and selfish? Even though Janai watched her prisoner be subjected to the Sunforge and somehow _pass_, it is still so hard to rationalize with everything she has ever known about humans, and all she has learned watching those… creatures that they allowed themselves to become. The creatures that ruthlessly killed scores of Janai's elven brethren, because she couldn't come up with a better battle strategy than _be our meat shield_.

But isn't the creation of those creatures somehow Janai's fault too?

The Sunforge… was it not supposed to be the very definition of purity? To light the true path, to fuel a fiery passion for righteousness, to burn away the impure? And instead, its power was perverted...

Janai hates humans.

Because all humans do is take and take and take. They took magic that is not theirs and they took her sister—_no, Janai cannot afford to think about __**her**_ _now_—and if the devil dressed as a human mage knows what happened to her grandmother, does that not mean the humans took her as well?

However, only days ago, she had first seen a human give rather than take. Her Katolis counterpart was prepared to give her life to seal the breach and in succeeding saved her soldiers' lives, and then she gave her freedom to save Janai's, and even when she was Lux Aurea's prisoner she gave them the information they needed to know they needed to escape and regroup rather than charge in to fight the darkness that had infiltrated their walls.

.

.

The next word she learns, she doesn't need Kazi to translate for her. She's staring off into the distance at the spot where her sister fell when the warrior approaches from behind. And she looks at Janai with those eyes, eyes filled with the understanding that only one who has lost and lost deeply can hold. And not only lost a dearly beloved, but a _sister_, a best friend, stolen from this world too soon. There were times where Janai did not _like_ her sister, but she always _loved_ her, and at the compassion in those eyes and the sign her hands make Janai storms away, angry with herself.

_Do not think about her. Do not get distracted. _She has those still alive that she can save. She has already wasted enough time thinking about what cannot be changed.

But it's later, when she can't take it anymore and she's alone, truly alone—_first her grandmother, then her parents, and now her sister, by the light what more can they take from her_—that Amaya finds her and wraps her in her arms.

_Does it ever go away?_ She weeps into Amaya's shoulder.

Janai doesn't need to see her shake her head to know the tensing of Amaya's shoulders against her head means _no._

She draws her strength from the sun, but Khessa was her light, her flame, her candle. But now that she has gone out, as Amaya holds her tight as Janai sobs and sobs and sobs, she finds another, small but burning bright—

.

.

Janai thinks she still hates most humans.

But she knows she loves one.


End file.
